HDR

Wow, lot's of updates today!

I've recently joined a flickr group based on a podcast that I've been listening to lately, TWIP (This Week In Photography). In this group there has been a discussion about HDR photos, which stands for High Dynamic Range. Basically what you do is take 3+ pictures preferrably on a tripod, with these pictures you adjust the exposure +-2 for each shot. So if you take 3 pictures then your first one will be -2 ev, 2nd is 0 ev, and last one is +2 ev. The more pictures you take the more you would adjust your exposure either way, up or down. Then you take said pictures and load'em up in a program that can handle HDR. Photoshop, Photomatix Pro, or another one called Bracketeer. I used Photomatix Pro to create the picture to the left (above). What it does is combines the pictures... stitches if need be and then gives you options to do Tone Map adjustments. With Tone Mapping you can do subtle things to the image or you can take it to the extreme. With my image, I probably am 50/50. As you can see HERE I took my original picture and ran it through photoshop to adjust the exposure twice and created 2 more pics that are the same but have adjustments to them. Then you let Photomatix do the work, voila! Pretty spiffy. Now you will get a better picture if you use different pictures actually shot from your camera. I just wanted to test it out so I used one picture and made multiples of it.

Neat, neat stuff! Flip!

ps. putting my links in to products and it seems that Bracketeer is Mac OSX only, fyi.